They are my favourite places to relax and recharge at the start or the end of my day.
Both give me peace and joy! Both help to still my mind and clarify my thoughts. They are constant inspiration for my designs, and life. Their scents and sights bring me great pleasure and are a powerful relaxant to my sometimes churning thoughts. They make me stop and take note of the small things that we sometime miss as we rush through our days.
What are your places? Where do you find peace and joy? Are they one and the same or are they different?
I hope that you have a great day! Be well.
Lynette
Neck Point Park
flowering snowbell
Good Morning Garden! I wish you could smell the heady scents of rose and honeysuckle, damp earth and the incredible scent coming from the little weeping Japanese tree that is to the left of me as I sit in my chair. It is covered in very fragrant white blooms right now and is quite heavenly!
Memories last forever – even when we don’t want them too! But the good memories, the ones you never want to lose, never want tarnished or never want shadowed, are the ones we cling too!
Memories Shawl is to celebrate those memories – a gift from a special friend to commemorate an important event. A visit to an amazing yarn store while on Vacation; with a yarn you had never seen before in a colour that just made you drool! We all have those yarns in our stash! I will remember the event and the people I met every time I wrap myself in the Rhinebeck Shawl.
Rhinebeck Shawl
Memories Shawl is designed to take advantage of multiple skeins of yarn. Maybe two skeins that are similar or two the same, or three the same. Some of those skeins might not show lace as well as we want – the pattern in these shawls is small and repeating, perfect for a highly coloured yarn. It is the edgings that need to be more subtle. They will set off the body of the shawl – in all its coloured glory.
Rhinebeck shawl was made with a larger skein of hand-dyed yarn so the body is bigger and the lace edging is more intricate, because it was for me and my love of lace knitting.
The B.C. Shawl is smaller and celebrates where I live! Something I know you can all relate too. Most of us have a place that means more to us than anything – a place in the past or the right “now” place.
B.C. Memories
The B.C. shawl was made with smaller hanks of yarn and was embellished with buttons. You know how much I love embellishments. But you can knit it plain, the knitting itself is fairly simple and not a bad option for a beginning lace knitter with a little experience under their belt. The edging gets its impact for the sharply defined edge and pop of colour – not an intricate lace pattern.
The Memories Shawl is the latest release in the ebook – Just Playing Around.
Is a hashtag that I use all the time, because, you know, I knit all of the time! LOL!
As a crafter I really appreciate the hand work of other makers, like this gorgeous Pear Wood bowl by Terry Marshall of Bowled Over Woodturning. Sorry he is not on the Internet, but his bowls can be found at Mad About Ewe Fine Yarns.
Not a yarn bowl, but a notions bowl, something to keep all my bits and bobs in line. Made of Pear wood with brass filings filling a crack in the bottom of the bowl.. Very cool..
This week I have been working on the eb00k, Just Playing Around. and today I added two hat patterns to the book. Just Playing around is still available at half price until May 14th or 15th.
Practically Perfect and Perfectly Practical, a aran weight simple cap that is a free download for all. Knit with Noro Kureyon.
I started a pooling project for the Just Playing Around ebook as well. Have you ever tried pooling – it is deliberately setting up your hand-dyed yarn to stack and form columns of glorious clear colour.
Pooling with Llama Lace and Pine Cone lace pattern.
Jana, my test knitter has finished her version of the stole, Plumier 2 and now I need to finish my version, Plumier 1! No rest for the wicked. Plumier 2 is knit with Handmaiden and Fleece Artist Flyss in the Tourmaline Colourway – look for this pattern to come out sometime early June.
BC Garn Bio Shetland GOTS for Plumier 2. I am well into the second half, but still have about 2-3 weeks of knitting left.
So that is what I am up to! What about yourselves? I hope that you are all making up a storm of things to eat, wear and share!
Be Well and Knit Happy!
Lynette
A beautiful Pink Dogwood Bloom to celebrate this glorious Spring Day.
Flat Iron was knit with Ancient Arts Lascaux Fine Fingering. This heathered yarn adds a great depth to the cabled pattern. I like this yarn so much that you will see another hat in the collection knit with the same yarn.
Lascaux Fine / Lascaux Fine 50’s – 25% Manx Loaghtan/75% Punta Arenas Wool
Lascaux Fine 50’s – 175 meters / 192 yards per 50 gram / 1.75 oz skein
Lascaux Fine 100 – 350 meters / 385 yards per 100 gram / 3.5 oz skein
Gauge: 25 – 30 sts / 4 inches (10 cm) US 1.5 – 2.5 or 2.5 – 3.0 mm
Lascaux Fine is a delightful blend of heritage and modern sheep fibre spun into a 2-ply fingering weight yarn which is perfect for stranded colourwork projects.
The heritage breed sheep is Manx Loaghtan, found only on the Isle of Mann, and the modern breed is the Punta Arenas from South America. The natural colour of this yarn is a light brown, so it has a heathered undertone when it is dyed, and although it looks rustic, it actually knits up exceptionally soft! This is a great yarn that feels wonderful against the skin, making it suitable for garments like mitts, sweaters and even lace shawls!
Note: Lascaux has it’s own unique colour palette due to the natural colour of the yarn.
Ancient Arts
Flat Iron Hat – knit with Ancient Arts Lascaux FineI played around with the photo to really highlight the shading of the yarn witch did affect the colour somewhat!
The hat and mittens make a great set and take only one skein of yarn.
I know we are all saying it, but I am going to say it anyway – I am so tired of Covid!
The First Camellia of the Spring
March was a bad month, My computer died, several files were corrupted. I lost all my contacts, all my original pattern charts. I had to re-load the pattern program but that didn’t remake my original charts. Many Thanks to StitchMastery for their help. I felt totally frustrated and overwhelmed for a while. I even didn’t feel like knitting.
I am, I think, back on track, much more my normal self. April is turning out to be not too bad!
Good morning from Maffeo Sutton walk way sometime last week.
For those of you who were at the Mad About Ewe Retreat 2020 – Diamonds are a Knits Best Friend – please contact me re receiving the finished, fixed and updated pattern.
I took this last week off of work and knocked a couple of things off of the too do list.
I finally released last years Retreat patterns – they are half price on Ravelry until April 21, Diamonds are a Knits’ Best Friend. Use the code Retreat2020.
We built and filled two small raised garden beds and we are going to finish off the brick paths in the herb garden I started quite, ahem, a few years ago (never did finish the bricks then). No plants as yet, it is still a little chilly but next week I am planting spinach and pea seeds. I like to cook, maybe it is time to grown a few fresh vegetables to add to the table.
I rested, went for a few walks, read a little and planned at lot. I may or may not have knit a little!
We were walking at Morden Colliery Park yesterday morning – what a gorgeous walk. The weather was perfect. There were still raindrops on the Trilliums, and the happy Skunk Cabbage was in full bloom. They have just finished a bit or restoration on the tipple – well worth the time.
So …..what’s next?
I am working on another e-book. This one about colour and texture, working with hand-dyed yarn, stash busting and various takes on those themes. The projects will include hats, shawls, fingerless mittens, cowls, a vest, and a tea cozy. The techniques will include cables, stranding, lace work, embellishing with beads and buttons, knitted embellishments in the form of fancy stitches and of course full on three dimensional knitted embellishments. Tea Cozy anyone?
The focus will be on Stash Busting to use up either single hanks of yarn, or single hanks paired with other single hanks. Stash busting up bits of left over colours in the same weight. Stash busting odd balls of yarn in unusual colours or textures for special effects.
What are the most prolific odd balls in our stash – well in my stash – they are the hand-dyed yarns. The absolutely gorgeous colourway that you fell in love with or were gifted with or have for what ever the reason, it sits in your stash waiting to be used, maybe one of these patterns is the perfect one!
There will of course be exceptions! And you know that the first rule of stash busting is that you generally have to purchase more yarn! LOL!
As well as the patterns there will be a couple of written articles about the yarns we could be using and about the techniques I am sharing – so I am expanding the scope of my efforts to include some real writing – I will try not to bore you all!
How do you celebrate Valentines Day? Do you mourn lost loves and hold those memories close to your heart? Do you gather your family close to you and hold them dear? Where does your heart lie?
I do them all. My family keeps my heart. Husband, children and grandchild, all are loved equally well in different ways.
My Father is still with me and loved as well.
But my Mother and Grandmothers and Grandfathers are all gone. They are always loved and always with me in Memory.
Granny Baptie would approve of the Scottish themed Greetings for the Day.
I have always found Valentines Day awkward. It usually speaks of only one kind of love when we know there are so many other kinds of love out there – family, friends, activities, yes activities! How much time and effort do we pour into all those things that we love and enjoy!? I know my heart and it lies with many.
Do we love those things for only the one day? No, but we do make that special effort to love them all harder I think. We take the time to contemplate life without them and we mourn those whose love is lost to us.
Mother on the right and Grannie Baptie to the left, Myself and Beth, 34 years ago. Three years later both my Grandmother and my mother were gone. So many memories.
It is snowing here. A serious snow, coming down hard, not the kind we usually get, big lazy flakes that melt as soon as they hit. This snow is lying and accumulating at an amazing rate. It is a wonderful day to stay home and contemplate the energy of the skies as they send snow down upon us.
Snowy days are perfect for hats. We don’t get that many of them here. And yesterday I was lucky enough to get pictures of hats in snow on Elise for some new patterns. A couple of those patterns were released today and the others will be released over the next few weeks.
Todays releases are Valentino and Dahlia! Two fabulous (well I think that they are fabulous!) fair-isle hats with beautiful crowns. Fair-isle hats are very satisfying hats to design. While they can start very plainly, they almost always finish up with a bang, a pop, a fabulous farewell in the design of the crown. Usually, the name of the hat comes from the design that ends up on the crown.
They are part of what I am calling a Hearts and Flowers Special. Purchase Valentino on Ravelry and use the code Sweetheart to receive Dahlia for free. Happy Valentines day.
It will be blackberry pie today – the berries are thawing right now.
The rest of today will be for my family and my other love, knitting. Working on some fingerless mittens to go with the FlatIron hat.
FlatIron in the Snow.
Be well and spend the day doing what makes you happy and loved. Love your friends and family as you will and task yourself with only the things you love to do. If that is PJ’s and coffee – so be it! Do it with all your heart!
